Keran incident: Antony to hold high-level meeting

New Delhi, Oct 20: Defence Minister

will hold a high-level

with the armed forces later this month during which he is expected to review the 15-day operation by the Army in

sector along the LoC over which questions have been raised.

The meeting comes against the backdrop of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressing his concern to the Defence Ministry over the handling of the operations by the Army in Keran where it claimed to have engaged a large group of terrorists but nobody was found there after 15 days.

Antony will hold the review meeting with the three Services chiefs and Defence Secretary RK Mathur later this month where the Keran incident is expected to come up for discussion, sources said here.

National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon, who had briefed the Prime Minister about the whole incident, is also expected to be present at the meeting, they said. The four-day Army Commanders' Conference starting from October 21 is also expected to discuss various aspects of the entire operation to evolve strategies for handling such incidents in the future.

Antony will meet the three Services chiefs and Defence Secy later this month

Questions have also been raised over the preparedness of the Army at a time when there have been two incidents of attacks on Indian troops inside Indian territory in the past 10 months and ceasefire violations by Pakistan have become very frequent.

It is learnt that the Prime Minister expressed concern over the incident as a lot of "exaggerated claims" were made by formations about their success there but the encounter went on for 15 days and, after it got over, the results did not match the claims.

PTI